Writing recently for USAToday, Harvard Law professor David B. Wilkins looked back at a disturbing, depressing event in recent American history:

During his confirmation hearings for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991, Clarence Thomas famously described the news media’s treatment of the allegations that he had sexually harassed a young female co-worker during his tenure as head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as a “high-tech lynching.”

In Thomas’ case, the claim was little more than clever hyperbole.

Wilkins’ snide characterization of Thomas’ metaphor is fairly commonplace on the Left. You see, progressives turn antsy when conservatives “steal” two of their favorite weapons: civil disobedience and metaphors. Pro-abortion activists still resent Operation Rescue for adopting passive resistance and street theater, and leftists hamfistedly mock anyone to their right who speaks and writes using figures of speech.